The Halcyon Fairy Book

a bridge of me.”
In a moment the witch had the bridge shivered to atoms,
This has got to be a translation thing. But does being shivered to very small bits fix being turned into a bridge/ tree/whatever? Apparently so. Magic, what’re you gonna do?
and then she hastened away to the palace. Stepping up to the young Queen’s bed, she began to try her magic arts upon her, saying, “Spit, you wretch, on the blade of my knife; bewitch my knife’s blade for me, and I shall change you into a reindeer of the forest.”
“Are you there again to bring trouble upon me?” said the young woman.
She neither spat nor did anything else, but still the witch changed her into a reindeer, and smuggled her own daughter into her place as the prince’s wife.
And again, the witch is breaking the rules. Still, I’ve got no sympathy for Princess Whoziwhatsis these days.
I do rather wonder what the ladies-in-waiting thought about the reindeer in the bed, though. I mean, that’s a hard thing to work around.
But now the child grew restless and cried, because it missed its mother’s care. They took it to the court, and tried to pacify it in every conceivable way, but its crying never ceased.
I have often had the desire to taking crying children to court, but have never found a lawyer willing to pursue the matter.
“What makes the child so restless?” asked the prince, and he went to a wise widow woman to ask her advice.
“Ay, ay, your own wife is not at home,” said the widow woman; “she is living like a reindeer in the wood; you have the witch’s daughter for a wife now, and the witch herself for a mother-in-law.”
“Wow, I never noticed. They all look the same once you apply the tar.”
“Is there any way of getting my own wife back from the wood again?” asked the prince.
“Give me the child,” answered the widow woman. “I’ll take it with me tomorrow when I go to drive the cows to the wood. I’ll make a rustling among the birch leaves and a trembling among the aspens — perhaps the boy will grow quiet when he hears it.”
I told you before, kids love trees! None of this newfangled television stuff — in my day, we rustled trees and we liked it! That was our entertainment! Leave us alone with a larch, we’d be fine for HOURS!
Kids today, you’re all soft. Get off my tree.
“Yes, take the child away, take it to the wood with you to quiet it,” said the prince, and led the widow woman into the castle.
He’s really cutting into my coating-things-with-tar time. The peasantry have been able to use their outhouses fearlessly for a month, and you can’t tell me that’s normal!
“How now? you are going to send the child away to the wood?” said the witch in a suspicious tone, and tried to interfere.
But the king’s son stood firm by what he had commanded, and said, “Carry the child about the wood; perhaps that will pacify it.”
So the widow woman took the child to the wood. She came to the edge of a marsh, and seeing a herd of reindeer there, she began all at once to sing:
Little Brighteyes, little Redskin,
Come nurse the child you bore!
That bloodthirsty monster,
That man-eater grim,
Shall nurse him, shall tend him no more.
They may threaten and force as they will,
He turns from her, shrinks from her still,
and immediately the reindeer drew near, and nursed and tended the child the whole day long; but at nightfall it had to follow the herd, and said to the widow woman, “Bring me the child tomorrow, and again the following day; after that I must wander with the herd far away to other lands.”
I am really starting to think that being a herd animal is weirdly hypnotic or something. SheepMom was totally calm about her impending doom, and now ReindeerGirl is going “Yes, well, I could stay with my child … or I could follow the herd! Oooh! I hear we’re going to Siberia! They have lichen! LICHEN!”
The following morning the widow woman went back to the castle to fetch the child. The witch interfered, of course, but the prince said, “Take it, and carry it about in the open air; the boy is quieter at night, to be sure, when he has been in the wood all day.”
Trees and tar! Just the stuff for a growing lad!
So the widow took the child in her arms, and carried it to the marsh in the forest. There she sang as on the preceding day:
Little Brighteyes, little Redskin,
Come nurse the child you bore!
That bloodthirsty monster,
That man-eater grim,
Shall nurse him, shall tend him no more.
They may threaten and force as they will,
He turns from her, shrinks from her still,
and immediately the reindeer left the herd and came to the child, and tended it as on the day before. And so it was that the child throve, till not a finer boy was to be seen anywhere. But the king’s son had been pondering over all these things, and he said to the widow woman, “Is there no way of changing the reindeer into a human being again?”
It’s been a couple of days, and I just now thought of this!
“I don’t rightly know,” was her answer. “Come to the wood with me, however; when the woman puts off her reindeer skin I shall comb her head for her; whilst I am doing so you must burn the skin.”
Hey, it works with selkies. And trees.
Thereupon they both went to the wood with the child; scarcely were they there when the reindeer appeared and nursed the child as before. Then the widow woman said to the reindeer, “Since you are going far away tomorrow, and I shall not see you again, let me comb your head for the last time, as a remembrance of you.”
Good; the young woman stripped off the reindeer skin, and let the widow woman do as she wished.
In my head, this totally just turned